Publisher 2007 freezes Windows XP, and system becomes unresponsive

[Bradford66]

Running XP pro on a SBS 2003 Windows Domain. No Sharepoint.

Publisher 2007 only freezes with one user on this laptop (dell d830), and no
other office 2007 apps cause the same issue. Loading publisher with a
different user doesn't cause the system freeze. Once publisher is started,
in a matter of a minute or so, the mouse moving over the screen is the only
visible observation of system activity. Ctrl-Alt-Del has no effect, and
waiting for an error message or application pop-up went on for hours. The
only recourse is to hard power off the machine and power back on again.
There is nothing in the event logs except for an "Application Hang MSPUB.EXE
veresion x.x.x., ect. ect." As for google, expert-exchange, and MS forum
research, I've found barely nothing that resembes my observed problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322119

and uninstalled all printers, but it had no effect. (plus that KB was for
publisher 2002)

http://www.dannytsang.co.uk/2008/05/12/microsoft-publisher-2007-freezing-problems/#comment-750

All that link shows is that someone else is experiencing a similar problem,
but there is no followup or advice.

I've uninstalled publisher 2007, not all of office 2007, rebooted, and
reinstalled, but it freezes just the same. I've looked at the processes
using sysinternal's procexp, and no process spikes out CPU or Memory. How
the heck do I troubleshoot this issue? How can I get more debugging
information about why Publisher 2007 COMPROMISES MY WHOLE SYSTEM. This is
officially WTF territory.

 

[Mary Sauer]

Have you checked to see if the user's profile is corrupt? If a different user is
having no issues on the same computer, it maybe a repair of the profile might be
the solution.

Windows XP Problems if Your Profile Is Damaged
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326688

How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151/